Property and Inheritance. 
of production persists; it will not be affected in 
itself by any change in the ownership of the capital. 
Hence the complete dependence of the propertyless 
wage-earner on the organisation, on “ employment,” 
to use the common expression, remains through all 
the changes in the ownership of capital of which we 
have experience. It makes no difference to the 
munition worker, gua worker, whether he is dis- 
charged by Woolwich Arsenal or Messrs. Vickers at 
Barrow ; in either case his income ceases, because 
his special skill is worthless outside the organisation. 
Strikes occur in the Consumers’ Co-operative Move- 
ment and in Municipal Trading undertakings, as 
they do in private employment, and for the same 
reason ; the worker’s economic position, qua worker, 
being dependent entirely on the price and terms 
which he can get for his special skill in the organisa- 
tion to which that skill is adapted, he finds himself 
in conflict with the persons who control that organisa- 
tion, and, failing to come to terms amicably, stops 
the organisation functioning in order to get his way. 
Associations of workers for the undertaking of collec- 
tive contracts, like the ill-fated Building Guilds, 
disguise their dependence under a change of form 
without affecting the substance; if their work is 
wanted, and they can offer it on terms that the 
persons wanting it can afford, their incomes are 
secure ; if not, they are unemployed equally as much 
as the private builder’s men. 
The Concentration of Directive Authority 
Sin 
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Caf. 
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Now, one of the most marked features of this 
productive organisation, a feature first insisted on by 
the great socialist writers like Marx, is the tendency 
towards a concentration of directive authority in 
fewer and fewer hands. This concentration is due